Outside Richmond, rebel flag replaces Obama sign

BY OLYMPIA MEOLA
Media General News Service
Published: October 21, 2008

Leroy C. McLaughlin finished his workday on Friday and was cooking dinner when a family member phoned.

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The 4-foot-by-8-foot Barack Obama campaign sign that McLaughlin had posted in the front yard of his Chesterfield County home was gone.

A Confederate flag hung in its place.

Surveying the scene that night, McLaughlin, 78, a Baptist minister and an Army veteran who lived to see the first black person nominated to a major-party ticket, had a message for whoever left the flag, viewed by many as a symbol of racial oppression: “I love you, and God does, too.“

That same night, someone drove by honking and shouting, according to McLaughlin’s family.

Monday morning, in the 15 minutes that a reporter and photographer were inspecting a new sign with McLaughlin, a small car sped back and forth past his house three times. Occupants rapidly beeped the horn and appeared to shout “No change,“ apparently a reference to McLaughlin’s new sign. Like the one it replaced, it says: “Vote for Change, November 4th.“

McLaughlin seemed unshaken.

“I’ve been praying for them, because we’re all going to be charged with what we do,“ he said. “It’s sad that we’ve grown and we want to keep fighting with something and can’t be peaceful and thankful.“

Sometime Friday between 7:30 and 9 p.m., someone ripped the sign from its wooden posts just a few feet off Bailey Bridge Road near Manchester High School.

A family member returning from Manchester’s homecoming football game saw the Confederate flag and alerted McLaughlin. He was fixing dinner near a tapestry montage that features the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., between the Statue of Liberty and a waving American flag.

McLaughlin went outside to find an outraged neighbor on his front lawn tugging the flag down. He told him to leave it, and they called police.

Chesterfield police spokeswoman Ann Reid confirmed that police are investigating the sign’s disappearance as a larceny. She said the sign was taken Friday night and replaced with a 3-foot-by-5-foot Confederate flag. Chesterfield police are holding the flag as evidence.

Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for Democrat Obama’s campaign in Virginia, said there have been other incidents in Virginia and across the country “that have had racial overtones.“

“I think on both sides we see overzealous supporters,“ he said. “We urge both our supporters as well as those of Senator [John] McCain to disagree in a respectful way.“

Gail Gitcho, a spokeswoman for Republican McCain’s Virginia campaign, said: “We have had reports of vandalism and theft of both McCain and Obama campaign signs on personal property throughout Virginia. It is sad and disappointing that this has happened across the state, and the McCain campaign strongly condemns these actions.“

McLaughlin’s 4 acres along Bailey Bridge Road are a wooded holdout among sprouting subdivisions. Since 1964, he has lived in the house he partially built by hand, and he still grows vegetables in rows alongside his home. He has trimmed hair in the same Richmond barbershop for 50 years and served as pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Cumberland County for two decades.

He said Monday on a break from making pear preserves that he isn’t pushing for a particularly severe punishment for the perpetrator. He didn’t raise his voice when discussing it; now that he has replaced the yard sign, he’ll be watchful.

He says he wants whoever took the sign to get a talking-to about trespassing and taking property that doesn’t belong to them — and about the significance of the symbol they left behind.

“I feel like this is somebody with a lot of hatred in their heart,“ he said. “It’s our job to help the guy try to do better in life.“